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Friday, January 25, 2019

New Accessions Include Frozen Mississippi, 1940

We
are pleased to showcase our new collections! This month’s accessions include
photos of the winter the Mississippi River froze over in 1940 and papers from
the longest-serving state historian.

Archival
Collections:

Ferguson, John L.:
Papers
from the longest-serving state historian have been transferred to Archives.
John L. Ferguson served 1960-2005 as state historian and director of the
Arkansas History Commission, which has since become the Arkansas State
Archives. Ferguson also took the lead in the state’s effort to preserve historic
sites and buildings and helped form The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program
in 1968. The program is under the Department of Arkansas Heritage. Ferguson was
a historian, minister, author, administrator and preservationist. He died in
2006 at age 80.

Photographs,
1940: The Mississippi
River froze from Memphis to New Orleans during a severe cold snap in January
1940. The weather turned very cold during the last 16 days of January, and
because the river was already low, it froze so hard people could walk on it.
The water near the shore of the Mississippi River froze solid and ice gorges
packed the rest of the river from bank to bank. The ice gorges stopped traffic
on the river from Jan. 10 to Feb. 5. The last time ice had been that widespread
on the river was 1918, according to information from the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers Memphis District. Now, the Archives possess 10 photographs of the
river frozen in Helena, Arkansas.

Barnes, Paula: The Archives
received a collection from Paula Barnes. The collection has a Centralian yearbook; a
special edition of Southwest Times Record on the Greenwood, Arkansas, 1968
tornado; two postcards; a photograph of the Scottish Rite in Little Rock,
Arkansas, 1921; one book for the 1931 Grand Chapter Office of the Eastern Star; and one Marion County Rural School register, 1957-1958.

Arkansas National Guard: We received 48 boxes of records from the National
Guard this month. The documents include discharged enlisted soldiers and
discharged officer records from 1973 and 1974. We will be getting more of these records through
2013 over the next year.

These
new collections will be processed and available for research in the coming
months. People interested in viewing the collections may contact the Archives
at 501-682-6900.

The
Archives and our library are open and available to the public from 8 a.m. to
4:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday at 1 Capitol Mall, Suite 215, in Little Rock.
You can also donate material by visiting our website or by contacting Julienne
Crawford, our curator and collections services coordinator, at julienne.crawford@arkansas.gov.